Raymond Aston
Oct 6, 2013 18:06:40 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2013 18:06:40 GMT -7
Raymond Aston
"And in the sea that's painted black, creatures lurk below the deck."
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Full Name - Raymond Aston.
Nicknames/Alias - Ray, ‘Oi, you’, or ‘greasemonkey’.
Age - Thirty.
Date of Birth - January 11th.
Place of Birth - On the Aurora. Space.
Gender - Male.
Sexual Orientation - Heterosexual.
Affiliation - Neutral.
Occupation - Anything that gets him a wage, normally he pulls his weight as a mechanic or pilot on various ships.
Play-By - Sebastian Stan.
Build - Tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, relatively muscular. Overall a distinctly mesomorphic shape.
Height & Weight - He’s six feet one inch tall and weighs in at just under two-hundred pounds.
Hair - His hair is short, mid-brown and always looks like he woke up that morning, looked at himself in a mirror and thought ‘screw it’, which is usually true.
Eyes - A murky blue-grey.
Unique Features - There’s nothing much that can be said about Ray's physical appearance. Straight nose, high cheekbones, square jaw normally sporting stubble. His skin is marred all over by dozens of scars, the products of everyday wear and tear, knife fights, shoot outs, and the occasional accident. Without bold hair or eye colours to identify him in a crowd, Ray can blend in almost anywhere which works well to his advantage when he needs to remain unseen. He is a chameleon, an everyman.
Dressing Style - Ray doesn't wear anything that's not comfortable and practical. Leather boots, worn from years of use, splattered in dirt and muck and crusty remnants of what looks suspiciously like blood, is one of the staples of his wardrobe, as are pants with pockets that you could hide a stowaway in. These pockets always have spare bolts, screwdrivers, and stray bits of wire in them. He has an almost deliberately scruffy appearance, and he seems to prefer shirts with holes in them or a tear here and there. He calls it 'ventilation'. Anybody else would just call it old.
Other - Oil and engine grease is a common face paint.
Likes - Women, strong and questionable booze, ships, tinkering around with engine mechanics, the feeling of sitting in a pilot's seat, and deliberately annoying people.
Dislikes - Land. Doesn't see any use for land-dwelling. He hates the thought of returning to Beylix, lest slavers find him again. Speaking of which, he hates slavers as well. Mildly dislikes politics, but it doesn't grind his gears all too much. And naturally, Ray really dislikes folk who try to kill him. But that's pretty rare that somebody tries.
Quirks/Habits - Captains may command their ships, but they're his babies, really. He also has a tendency to fall asleep in his workplace, whether it be in the cockpit, still in the pilot’s seat, or in the engine room. He is also a frequent drinker, and often nicknames his fellow crew mates.
Fears - Other than dying alone in deep space like his aunt did? Ray fears returning to Beylix. Powerful folk there are still wanting to finish that beating for freeing slaves.
Secrets - Ray can’t have anybody, anybody at all, finding out who – or what – he is. There’s a lot of fear in the ‘verse about Reavers, and for good reason. Last thing he wants is to be associated with them.
Strengths - Ray is a decent brawler with high pain tolerance, deceptively smart, and a miracle worker with ships.
Weaknesses - Smart though he may be, Ray has never been known for his tactical or strategic prowess; he just runs in there and punches. He is, on the whole, impertinent, rash, stubborn, opinionated, and pointlessly difficult at times, and can be very unreliable. He has no loyalty to anywhere, anyone, or anything. Finally, although he can be quite the charmer, Ray has little to no idea how to navigate through high society, politics, or big business, since, having never lived on land, he’s never needed to learn.
Talents/Special Abilities - He’s known as a genius mechanic, an ace pilot, and he can save his hide with quick thinking in dire situations.
Aspirations - None, really. Just to live free, in any way he likes.
Overall Personality - Ray’s sense of morality lies in the murky grey region. A true neutral. He’s pretty flaky, not above going back on deals or stabbing somebody in the back if it’s for his own benefit. As a general rule, though, he’ll try to uphold his end of bargains or deals because not doing so is bad for a business reputation. Otherwise, he will happily lie, cheat and steal, but he will not kill or enslave. He often dabbles in the illegal, but never the immoral, willing to take people’s stuff but not their life, unless they’ve tried to kill him or hurt somebody he loves. In such situations, he can brush off an attempt on his own life far easier than he can forget a threat towards a loved one, proving that he values his family and crew’s safety far more than he values his own.
Ray uses Frontier Slang, talks almost entirely in sarcasm and quips, and rarely takes things seriously. Even when in near-death situations, or perhaps especially so, he always finds the time to crack a smart-assed one-liner. A confident liar with a killer smile, he bullshits his way through life, often using a variety of names and identities to slip past resistance.
Ray absolutely loves ships. He has a very personal connection to them. Besides being raised on ships, he and his aunt were constantly bumped from vessel to vessel, taking clandestine rides under Alliance radar, then changing again because their captain double-crossed somebody ugly and angry.
A born spacer, Ray’s never seen the big deal about land. Well, he can get the hype. Water, oxygen, crops, whoo! But beyond that, it’s just a big ass rock full of people you don’t know and generally don’t like, but on a ship it’s a personal matter. The ship is not only your home, not just your entire world, but it protects your life. One crack in the outer hull of a vessel and you dry up and freeze and suffocate. There’s something more intimate about a ship than there ever can be with living on a planet. And the crew and passengers of a ship become so close they’re like family. As such, insulting his ship is taken personally, and threatening a member of his crew warrants counterattack.
When it comes to exchanging fists, Ray isn’t a trained fighter, nor is he the best at it, but the guy can certainly brawl very well. It’s usually a simple case of ground-and-pound until his target yields or until he’s pulled away by force. On the receiving end, he can withstand a massive amount of punishment before he finally gives in to a sky-high pain tolerance.
His temper takes extraordinary action to provoke, but when it is, he's brutal, and has a tendency not to stop until his target is either down and not moving, or he is physically restrained until he calms down.
What surprises practically everyone is the fact that Ray is secretly kind of a genius. He was never educated in fancy schools about literature and history or any of that stuff, but he knows his mechanics and electrics, he can fly the majority of ships in the ‘verse with such fine precision that he could pilot a thread through the eye of a gorram needle. He’s good with chemistry, and physics, can come up with substitute parts made from other bits and bobs, make his own alternatives, and he certainly knows people pretty well. Ray grew up tinkering around engines and ship workings, fine tuning engine efficiency, replacing life support parts. When he was a kid he was often utilised for his small arms and hands and little fingers to reach into the tight spaces of engines, and even when he grew up he never stopped, To this day mechanics is his first love, but he is just as talented a flier as he is an engineer, and can also slip into the pilots seat and make a ship dance just as well. Ray often lies awake at night and listens to the sounds of the engines the way he did when he was just a child. It’s comforting knowing that they’re still moving. He knows the ship he’s on like the back of his hand, and if he doesn’t know every nut and bolt he makes it his business to learn. As such, Ray is intensely possessive and protective over his ships, usually talking to them like they’re his girls.
Ray has great confidence in himself because he has little faith in other people beyond the hull of his ship. He could be described as being cynical, and pessimistic in this way, but Ray will claim that expecting people to double-cross you only prepares you for when they inevitably do. Overall, he has compassion for the lives of others, but little stock in their allegiances or choices, just as he is protective over his crew but has no loyalty to any of them in particular. He will help people in need, but then quickly ditch them when he’s confident they no longer need him around. A tough love approach. Even during the Unification War he deemed it the Land People’s problem, and not a mess he should feel compelled to get involved with.
He can be described as crude and uncultured, though Ray has been to most planets, experienced many different societies, and can switch from Frontier Slang to proper Core Speech at the flick of a switch. Beneath a toughened exterior he has an appreciation for beauty, only that he finds it in the most unusual of places. He finds beauty in mechanics, in ships, in the solar dust clouds of space. He finds the big black emptiness of the universe beautiful and terrifying simultaneously, and finally, but not surprisingly, he appreciates the beauty of women.
Father - Unknown.
Mother - Lenore Aston. Deceased, aged twenty-eight. Communications officer aboard the Aurora. Committed suicide.
Siblings - N/A.
Other Significant People - Helena Aston, maternal aunt. Deceased, aged fifty-six. Hired hand aboard a multitude of ships.
Pets - N/A.
Your History - Ray’s beginning was not a pleasant one. His mother was a communications officer working on a large trading vessel called the Aurora. They were the straight-laced type, not dealing with criminals and often supplying cargo shipments to and from Alliance worlds. After dropping off pesticides on Deadwood, Lenore detected an emergency transmission coming from beyond the Blue Sun system, beyond Burnham’s orbit. When they found the ship giving out the signal, what they found was a Reaver raid in progress. Caught amidst the massacre, the Aurora and its crew were not given the luxury of escape, or allowed to remain alive.
What happened next should never be described. Lenore was singled out, raped, beaten, and forced to watch as the rest of her crew, and the people of the other ship were mutilated, carved up, beaten, used as clothing, and only then allowed to die.
Lenore was left broken and alone, adrift in deep space, surrounded by the corpses of her friends. And when the Reavers left, the infection of silence was too much to bear.
But Lenore was no pilot, nor a mechanic. She was a communications officer, and her skilful interpretation of an emergency beacon had got everybody slaughtered in the worst way possible. Grief, guilt, fear. The unrecognisable bodies stared at her in the shadows.
The life support systems kept her alive as the Aurora and its ghosts floated in the black. For months Lenore went crazy, shortening periods of lucidity allowing her just enough time to send out a signal for the vessel she knew her sister to be on. The Harpy.
It was nine months later that the Harpy flew close enough to pick up the transmission. Helena recognised her sister’s voice on the recording, and asked her captain to divert their course so that she could rescue her sister. As the Harpy drew closer, however, it became obvious what had happened. Lenore was beyond saving, but Helena, stubborn as ever, refused to abandon her sister. Nobody in the crew dared cross into the other ship, so Helena went alone. It was her sister after all, her problem.
The life support systems were as functional as ever, of course, despite months of neglect. When the Harpy connected to the Aurora, oxygen flooded the ship. Ancient, dead air was made new again in minutes, warm and sweet. Helena picked her way through the bodies, and eventually found her sister. What was left of her, anyway. Lenore had pulled out most of her teeth, torn out her nails, peeled off a quarter of her skin and carved chunks of flesh from her own body. She had been surviving on the ship’s rations and partially by eating the cadavers of her dead crew. She was also pregnant. Somehow, and for some reason, while Lenore had mutilated herself she had never done anything to harm the baby. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps not.
Lenore didn’t recognise Helena. She attacked. Helena defended. She tried to wrestle Lenore into the medical bay, attempted to strap her onto a bed, but Lenore was too strong, or at least no longer aware of pain. But, just when Helena was about to cut her losses and run, a period of lucidity seemed to descend over Lenore. For the first time, she looked at Helena with eyes that seemed to recognise her, seemed to understand what she had become. Lenore tried to say something, but with so many teeth missing and her tongue a mangled, chewed hunk of tissue, nothing was understandable. Then Lenore picked up a scalpel and plunged it into her own neck.
Blood spurted all over her screaming sister.
Lenore slid down against the countertop, and as blood gurgled out of her throat, she seemed to say one word. A word that Helena may well have misheard, but as Lenore fell limp, Helena stared down at her sister and knew she had to act fast. She picked up a scalpel.
Nobody knows what happened in the next few minutes. The crew of the Harpy simply saw Helena making her way back across the connector, walking slowly, calmly, despite being covered in blood and holding a bundle in her arms. The Harpy’s crew stared at her, speechless. For a long time not a word was said until Helena gave one quick glance at the captain and said, “Shall we go, then?”
She called the boy Raymond, after hers and Lenore’s father, and she never told the boy about what had happened on the Aurora or what she had seen. For the first few years of Ray’s life, the crew of the Harpy looked at him with mistrust. He was Reaver spawn, they knew. There weren’t nothing right with that kid.
But the stares didn’t last for long. When he was two years old Ray moved ships for the first time, to a Arrowhead-class Courier named Juno. Jumping ships was something that would happen many times in the years to come.
Helena and Ray travelled, worked, lived on ships. They moved constantly, and Ray was so entranced by spaceships that by the age of four or five he already knew his way around a fusion reactor engine without direction. Helena often worried that this was no proper childhood for the boy, but then, when Ray hung about the engine rooms, asked questions, even seemed to be enjoying himself, Helena figured that as long as he was happy they would carry on as they were.
His childhood was never one of running through green meadows or golden fields of barley, but of engine noises clanging through the night and the constant whir of the ship as it recycled usable oxygen. Other people listen to the sounds of the soft whooshing of the life support systems and think of the ocean. Ray is the other way around. He hears the sound of the ocean and it reminds him of the calming, reassuring breath of the life supports.
In fact, when the ships he was on did finally touch down onto land, it was usually only for a few hours or so before it was time to take off again. And even the few moments he got to spend on land were boredom and confusion and apathy. He had no home when he had never visited any planet for more than a day, and no sense of loyalty or patriotism when he had no concept of nations or countrymen. Planets were an overrated concept, and who needed fields to run through when you could just make up a mechanical excuse to don an exosuit, escape the skip, and float around the vast empty nothingness of space for a while until your oxygen ran low?
Life continued on in the same way for many years. Ray was about ten when he started to have a say in what jobs Helena took. After all, wherever she worked, Ray also went, and the ship she chose would become his home. Her decisions affected him too. Save for a few disagreements here and there, they almost always decided on the same jobs and the same ships.
In fact, he was seventeen when he and Helena finally disagreed on different jobs. She wanted to take a co-pilot position on a Knorr Class Freighter called Minnow- an oddly designed ship where you either love it or you hate it. Ray didn’t ‘hate’ them exactly, but he thought their layout impractical, their engine form messy, their mechanical structure reductionist, and generally held great distaste for the ships.
So, after a long discussion, Helena took the job on Minnow. Ray took a different job on a CL-54 Cargo Lifter: Juggernaut. True to its name, the Juggernaut was a hardy thing, with a clunky but loyal engine built from a mixture of scraps and shiny new parts. It seemed they only replaced what they couldn’t absolutely repair or ignore. The number of shiny parts in the engine should have been a major safety red flag, but Ray was way beyond health and safety concerns at that point.
They were transporting a shipment of valuable medicines across open space when the Juggernaut struck a black hole at the centre of a whirlpool of compressing matter and intense gravity. A passing piece of meteor being pulled towards the gravitational field had clobbered the ship, taking out one of the engines and sending them careering further into the black hole. With one of the engines critically damaged and unable to run, Juggernaut was running at fifty percent engine capacity, but it was already too late, the engine output was only slowing the inevitable. They started creeping towards the black hole's core, already within the ergosphere. Pretty soon the outer hull of the ship was going to start to buckle if something wasn't done - and fast.
CL-54 Cargo Lifters have a reputation for just not giving up, running in even the most adverse conditions to rival even the Firefly. But even the toughest ship couldn’t withstand black hole gravity. Given half a chance the black hole would have the entire ship and its crew annihilated.
With impending death and no clear answer, Ray had to act. Ignoring orders, he ditched the precious cargo to lighten up the ship, then stormed into the cockpit, grabbed the pilot by his collar and hauled him out of the chair. The pilot scrambled to his feet to find Ray was already in his seat and flicking switches one by one.
“What are you doing?” the pilot had rushed over, tried to pull Ray’s hands away from the controls.
Ray batted away the pilot’s hands as he shut down the power generator and life support systems. They didn’t need electricity for the time being, and there was enough oxygen on the ship to last them an hour or so. Either they could do without the system for a few minutes or they’d not need it anyway.
“Conserving vital energy.” Ray continued to shut nonessential systems down. “I’ve already had to ditch the cargo.”
“You did what?” came another voice.
Ray ignored the alarmed voice of the captain as they stormed into the cockpit.
“The cargo,” Ray responded. “It’s gone.”
Ray lowered his hands to the console and wrapped steady fingers around the twin joysticks. The pilot stood behind him, hands on the headrest, watching his every move like a hawk.
“It’s no use,” the pilot said, noticing Ray was drawing back. “We don’t have enough power to pull away.”
“I ain’t trying to pull away. I’m gonna fly this baby right at it.”
The captain had made a choking noise of shock. “Are you out of your mind?”
“If I can fly with the current of the gravity,” Ray had said, “then maybe I can generate enough velocity to slingshot us the hell outta here.”
And then, without another word of explanation, Ray pushed forwards onto the two joysticks. The engine swivelled around, and launched them towards the black hole. Ray used the remaining engine to pull the vessel to side, so that they seemed to curve to one side and towards the event horizon, Ray having chosen the angle of flight based on the position of the remaining engine. They were drawing closer, closer. Gravity weighed down on them like tonnes of invisible water. If he mucked this up, they were all dead. No pressure, then...
Ray began to peel away from the black hole, now surfing on the elliptical current away from the black hole's core. When they were far enough away, and breathing became easier again, he flicked the nose out of the pull of the gravity and the sheer speed of the ship sent Juggernaut flying on its merry way. They emerged, safe and alive, but had to explain the loss of the shipment to their employer. Still, it was a small price to pay for life.
The incident on the Juggernaut, quickly garnered Ray a reputation for being a darn fancy pilot. He was later traded from the Juggernaut onto a Wren-class Light Transport vessel called Homunculus; Ray was transferred from ship to ship, and money was transferred in the opposite direction, exchanged as a crew member for his skill. In other words, he was sold. Ray should have complained about being treated like a slave, but in actual fact, he didn’t mind being transferred. The ship was tiny, and handled like a ballerina. The engine was fairly simple, but so compact that it was a real challenge figuring out where all the components had been shifted to, and on the Homunculus, there was a man who used to be on the Harpy at the same time as Helena. His name was Eoghan O’Connor.
He and Eoghan got to be pretty close. Eoghan was about fifty and was like a dad towards Ray, showing him the neat tips and tricks about how to makeshift parts and kick start power cells. He came to tell Ray of the story behind the Aurora and his birth. Eoghan may have dramatised it a little, but among the crew of the Harpy, the story was almost legend. He at least had the sense to let Ray know that Helena probably hadn’t fought her way through hoards of Reavers, but the rumour about it was there all the same.
That was how Ray found out he was ‘Reaver spawn’ as Eoghan put it.
He spent five years on Homunculus as a ‘getaway pilot’ of sorts before moving on. When he was twenty-three he decided to take another job on a Bernard-class SAR Vessel. Name of Echelon. One of the first jobs he got on Echelon went south. The crew were hired by a rich and shady man to fly his cargo out to Beylix. Only, the ‘cargo’? Turned out to be slaves. That didn’t sit right with Ray one bit, and after taking it upon himself to free the slaves, he faked an engine malfunction so that Echelon would be forced to land early and repair. When the ship landed on Constance, Ray freed the slaves and left them to find their own ways.
The crew inevitably discovered what he’d done, sold him out to the employer on Beylix, then walked away as Ray got the crap beaten outta him for freeing the shipload of people. His only defence was: “Humans ain’t cargo.”
After word of that got out, even after his feats of flying on Juggernaut, nobody wanted to hire him for a long time afterwards. He finally got a job as a mechanic on Inkstone, an Iliad-class space liner, and he only got the job because Eoghan was in the crew and vouched for him. It was on Inkstone that he met a very beautiful antiques dealer that fenced priceless objects from Earth-That-Was, had a whirlwind romance. Her name was Katya. They stayed up late, laughed about death, contemplated life, and thought themselves deep. They drank wine from sixteenth century Italian Medici porcelain vases. They eventually separated, though, Katya having her own life to attend to, and on Inkstone Ray did a lot of good jobs. Basically, he had the best time of his life on that ship.
He and Helena met up by pure chance on Di Yu a few years into the job, and he ended up getting his aunt a job on the ship. For the first time in a long time, it was like old family back together again on one vessel, sharing stories, giving Helena a firsthand account of the Black Hole Incident which by now seemed to be told as a ‘friend of a friend of a cousin’ kind of story shared by pilots in bars across the ‘verse. It seemed the actual pilot of the Juggernaut was taking the credit in most of the versions he heard, though.
Ray was twenty-eight when a solar storm hit the ship, damaging key systems including communications and one of the engine fuel lines. With Inkstone drifting to a halt in deep space and no way to send out an emergency help beacon, it was up to the Astons to do an EVA to repair the ship. Helena and Ray suited up, opened the hatch, and floated out into the black. The task itself was extraordinarily difficult, a bit like performing ballet and rocket science at a hundred and twenty-five thousand miles per hour.
They had managed to repair the main damage on the power lines and they had thirty minutes remaining on their oxygen levels.
“Okay,” Eoghan said, speaking through helmet radios from inside Inkstone. “I’ve got shiny green lights on the power lines, how’re we doing on that there com power supply?”
“We’re going to need more time on this,” Helena replied. “I think it’s a blown fuse in the communication panel.”
“Alright, we’re at the communication panel,” Ray said, keeping hold of the hull of the ship as he steadied his floating legs. “Openin’ up the door.”
Helena was already there. “Ray, take a look at this.”
Ray floated in a little closer trying to survey the damage by his dingy helmet light. “The receptors are shot. And the whole board is fried. Looks like we’ve gotta take the pins off.”
Ray stuck his hand into the gap and gripped the first pin. In came out fairly easily. The second didn’t.
“Argh! Tā mā de!” he swore. “It’s not comin’.”
“Sorry, Eoghan,” Helena said. “We got a frozen pin here.”
“Leave that pin in then,” Eoghan said. “Maybe you can work around it.”
Ray shook his head inside his helmet. “We ain’t gonna know how bad the damage is ‘til we get in there, and we ain’t gettin’ in there if the pin won’t give.”
“Are you sure you can’t get some heat on that or anything?” Eoghan asked.
“No,” Helena said. “The damage could spread.”
Ray tried to pry it open by force, with Helena’s hands securing the panel door. He wrenched the thing open, but his glove snagged, and when the panel door gave way, the fabric tore, releasing his oxygen supply into space with a hiss.
“Gāisǐ de!” Helena barked. “We got a puncture!”
Ray instantly felt the pressure begin to drain from his suit. “It’s okay, I’m okay, we’re tethered.” Ray said, trying to reassure others whilst covering the puncture with his glove to staunch the gas release.
Eoghan called for the captain to come over on the other side of the radio, then said to them, “Ray, don’t you attempt to climb back in on your own. Helena?”
Helena had let go of the communications panel and had gripped Ray by the shoulders of his suit with gloved hands. “I know, I got him.”
“Get him in quick.”
He was feeling lightheaded. An ominous red stain was visible across his glove. “Guys, I think I’m bleedin’.”
“Keep calm, Ray,” Eoghan said, “you need to conserve your oxygen.”
“He’s got one hand over it,” Helena said, “but he’s losin’ air.” Helena was pulling them back along the tether, one arm wrapped around his middle. In zero gravity she carried him easily. Her voice was soft, reassuring. “Hey, I got you.”
The captain’s voice now came onto the radio. “His blood pressure’s droppin’, Helena, you don’t have a lot o’ time.”
And Eoghan- “Helena, listen to me, his oxygen levels are red lighting. Get him back inside the ship!”
They were nearing the ship’s airlock, the open hatch inviting them back inside. They were so close now. But on the cameras outside, something became visible.
“Helena, stop,” the captain commanded, voice stern. “There’s somethin’ on your suit.”
Ray and Helena both looked down. By the detection lights just inside the hatch door, they could both see the telltale yellow stains covering Helena’s suit.
Helena sighed. “Shit, it’s ‘zine. It must’ve happened when we popped the panel.”
“What can we do to decontaminate?” Eoghan said.
He captain responded, “We can’t. If she comes in then the ship’s air supply will be toxic.”
Ray managed to rasp through his light-headedness. “We need to figure out a way to get the suit clean, else she’s screwed.”
“Helena,” the captain snapped, “get him in the ship. We need to repressurise his suit now and then we’ll figure out a way to get you in.”
Helena was shaking her head. “No, no. I got five minutes of oxygen, and I’m not gonna get clean.”
“Hey,” Ray said, floating with Helena outside the hatch door. “I ain’t goin’ in without you.”
But Helena was frowning. “No, Ray, you’re about to black out, this ain’t gonna work.”
“Helena, he’s bleeding oxygen!” Eoghan was shouting. “He doesn’t have long left, he’s fading. You have got to get him in the lock. Now!”
Helena turned him to face her. His vision was going blurry by now. Breathing was difficult. “Ray? Honey?”
He was slipping in and out of consciousness. Barely even there.
“Ray, I love you.” She pulled him into a stiff, suited hug for a moment, then she unclipped herself from the tether, threw Ray into the ship and with the force it took to get him inside, she started to float out into space in the opposite direction.
The hatch door was shut behind him, the airlock sealed.
The captain- “Airlock’s closed, repressurising.”
“What about Helena? We need to go after her.” Eoghan.
“We can’t. By the time we get there, she...” The captain didn’t finish.
Ray slowly came to, finding himself in Inkstone’s medical bay. Helena wasn’t there. He sat up, looked around grim expressions and sad eyes, and he knew. He charged for the door, but Eoghan grabbed him by the armpits, hauled him back. Ray threw Eoghan off him, charged to the windows, and looked out. Helena wasn’t there. She’d long since drifted off, by now so far gone that the deep black of space had swallowed her whole. And even if they had gone after her, pulled her into a shuttle, kept her in quarantine until they landed, there was no way she’d have survived with no oxygen.
Helena was gone. His only family. Gone.
Ray didn’t stay on Inkstone for much longer after that. With the engines back online, they landed on the nearest planet for repairs. Ray never got back on board. He took a few odd jobs after that on other ships. To him, each ship is just another stepping stone, another family adopted for a short while until he moves onto the next job. He will never settle, never stay. Space is deadly and dangerous, has taken his only family from him, but out there, in the black... it’s the only home he’s ever had, and he’s not giving it up now.
What should we call you? - Just Ray is fine.
Roleplaying Experience - About ten years.
Where did you find us? - Linksurfing. You were affiliated on Finding Serenity.
Prove Yourself - Shiny.
Post Script - N/A.
Other characters - N/A.
How we should contact you - PM, preferably.
Roleplay Example - Rousing awake with a jerk and a snort, Ray lifted his head. For a second he heard the whoosh of the life support systems and saw the big black emptiness of space, and the first thing that came to mind was the incident on Inkstone, with his suit ruptured and him bleeding out his precious oxygen. Then his thoughts flashed momentarily to Helena, and then to the Griffon. Only then did he remember where he was.
Blinking, then rubbing the gunk from one eye, Ray looked over to the co-pilot's chair the way he always did when he woke up. He always figured that if anyone was keeping him company as he dozed off, they'd be sat in the only other decent chair in the place. The co-pilot's chair was normally empty. It always was. He'd come to expect nothing less, and his check was more force of habit than expectation. But on this occasion there was a blanketed figure cast in silver and white against the dim dashboard lights of the Griffon, and the sight, along with the unexpected presence, almost gave him a heart attack.
With a violent jerk and a yelp, he jolted awake, sitting forwards so quick he damn near gave himself whiplash. A hand at his chest, over a pounding pulse. "Ohshi-hit." He sat forwards, hunched for a second over the steering yoke, trying to get used to the shock.
"Tā mā de, you scared the bejeebus outta me." He slumped back in the chair, running both hands through his already scruffy hair. "Don't make a habit of that, will ya?"
It was just the medic, though. He hadn't had much of a chance to talk to her, but sometimes her heard her footsteps around the ship at night, light and delicate, as if fearful of waking people. That was probably how she'd managed to creep up and sit in the co-pilots seat without him having a clue.
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SYR INTEGRA of CAUTION 2.0 created this and she will happily hunt you down, rip out your spinal cord, and beat you to death with it if you steal her hard work and claim it as your own. especially since she will gladly share it with any and all who wish to use it, provided they leave her nice, little credit attached.
